[1] The word _sharab,_ "parched ground," A.V., more exactly
"looming sand-waste," refers to the mirage, of which it is
the Arabic name. The vain shadows of the world, which
deceive and never satisfy, are to be replaced by the
enduring joys of the kingdom of God.--_Birks._
Some years ago we were riding over a desert in intense and
almost distressing heat. We could but lie still and endure
it. We turned our eyes to the south, and, lo! in the
horizon there suddenly appeared a beautiful lake, which
appeared studded with islands of palms! But it was only
appearance, there was no water; and had we been perishing
from thirst, the beautiful vision would but have mocked our
need.--_Clemance._
No one can imagine, without actual experience, the delight
and eager expectation (when the vision first is seen), or
the intense and bitter disappointment which the appearance
of a mirage occasions to travellers, specially when their
supply of water is spent.
"Still the same burning sun! No cloud in heaven!
The hot air quivers, and the sultry mist
Floats o'er the desert, with a show
Of distant waters mocking their distress."--_Kitto._
The word _sharab,_ here rendered "parched ground," is the
same that in Isaiah xlix. 10 is translated _heat:_ "They
shall hunger no more, they shall thirst no more; the
_sharab,_ nor the sun, shall never smite them more."
The primary sense of _sharab,_ giving the key to both
applications, is the dazzling, vibrating, noonday heat.
Thence it is here taken as a name for its effect, of the
mirage in the desert caused by the intense meridian
rarefaction and refraction. It is a well-known delusive
appearance, arising from the motions of the heated
atmosphere, taking great varieties of form, but especially
suggesting pictures of grove and fountain scenery--lakes,
rivers, green valleys, waving trees, cool and sequestered
shades, with every image most grateful to the imagination
of the wearied traveller. These often seem so vivid as to
be mistaken for realities.
The very common use of the same word (_sarab_) by the
Arabian poets, in this mirage sense, makes certain the real
meaning here. It gives it, too, a glorious significance of
which our translation, though etymologically correct, and,
to a certain extent, quite plausible, falls far short. It
should be rendered: "The mirage shall become a lake (a
_real_ lake, not a mere mockery of one), and the thirsty
land springs of water." For the expressive meaning of the
word rendered "thirsty-land," see Deut. viii. 15--"that
great and terrible wilderness." So Gesenius, very happily:
_Et desertum aquœ speciem referens commutabitur in
lacum--in veram aquam._ (And the desert having the
_appearance_ of water shall be changed into a lake--_into
true water._)
The spiritual idea which the passage, thus interpreted,
suggests is most striking, whilst at the same time
commending itself as having a solid basis, and far removed
from the character of an arbitrary sentimentalism. It has a
substantial philological support, and comes so directly
from the peculiar word employed, that we are compelled to
regard it as entering into the prophet's conception.
The primary reference is to the exiles returning from
captivity, passing through the land of drought, the valley
of Baca (Ps. lxxxiv. 6), and refreshing themselves at "the
wells of salvation;" but there is a glow and a glory in the
language, as in so many other parts of the Scriptures, that
carries it far beyond this, though the Rationalist, if he
chooses, may rest in the lower sense, and maintain it on
undeniable exegetical grounds. The spiritually-minded
reader finds something more--something which alone comes up
to the splendour of the style, and without which the
hyperbole, beautiful as it is, would seem tumid and
extravagant. It is a _mounting sense,_ as we may call it,
rather than a _"double"_ or enigmatical representation. The
lower is the basis, undoubtedly, but we cannot rest in it.
As elsewhere, in the Prophets and in the Psalms, the
earthly salvation is described in terms and figures
powerfully suggestive of higher spiritual realities. The
exegesis, therefore, that comes from this is not arbitrary.
To the mind in spiritual harmony, it seems to be the only
one that truly satisfies the emotional glow and fervour of
the language. The mirage of this world in the highest
reality it can claim--still more the mirage our "vain
imaginations" create in it--is worse than the dry desert
itself; its delusions, when discovered, produce more pain;
the disappointment intensifies the thirst. Hence the
exceeding impressiveness of the prophet's figure when
rightly understood. The unreal shall vanish; truth,
substance, eternal reality shall take the place of all that
is false. Man shall cease "walking in a vain show"
(_betselem_), an image, a shadow (Ps. xxxix. 6). This
mirage of time shall become a fountain of _real_ water, of
"_living water,_ springing up to everlasting life." "With
joy shall ye draw water from the wells of salvation" (Isa.
xii. 3).
"The shadows are gone, truth has come." Mohammed seems to
have, in some way, caught a spark from the prophetic
inspiration, when he represents the righteous saying this,
as they lift up their hands in the morning of the
resurrection. In the Arabic, as in the Hebrew, the power
comes from the graphic mode which both languages possess,
in so high a degree, of picturing the future in the
present, and even in the past. "Joy and triumph _are_
overtaking them, sorrow and sighing _have fled_ away." This
is not the land of reality. The idea comes down from the
pilgrim language of the patriarchs, who so pathetically
declared themselves to be but "travellers and sojourners
upon the earth." They were looking for "the better
country," the _real_ home, the "city which hath
foundations," firm and everlasting. Something of the same
idea, and from the same early source, perhaps, may be
traced in the most ancient Arabian poets who lived before
the days of Mohammed. From them he most probably borrowed
the striking similar figure we find in the Koran (Sura
xxiv. 29), entitled "Light." It has the same word
(_sharab_), and, in other respects is immediately
suggestive of the passage in Isaiah: "As for the
unbelieving, their works are like the _sarab,_ the mirage
of the plain. The thirsty traveller thinks there is water
there; but lo, he comes and finds it nothing." The latter
parts remind us of the description in Job vi. 17, which may
be cited, too, as one of the examples of its Arabian
imagery. It is a picture of the thirsty traveller sustained
by the hope of finding the refreshing wady stream; but
instead of the imagined reality, nothing meets the eye but
dried-up bed whose waters have vanished, "gone up to
_tohu,_" the formless void, as the Hebrew so graphically
expresses it
"What time they shrink deserted of their springs,
As quenched in heat they vanish from their place;
'Tis then their wonted ways are turned aside:
Their streams are lost, gone up in emptiness.
The caravans of Tema look for them;
The companies of Sheba hope in vain;
Confounded are they where they once did trust;
They reach the spot and stand in helpless maze."
Another very striking passage, where the same word is used,
may be found in the Koran (Sura lxxviii. 20): "When the
hills are set in motion, and become like the _sarab_"--the
vanishing mirage. It is a description of the day of
judgment, when the world will be found to have been a
_sarab,_ a departing dream. Or it may represent its
exceeding transitoriness, like that other name _ajalun,_
the _rolling, hastening, passing_ world, which the Koran
and the early Arabian poets give to this present mundane
system as compared with the reality of Paradise. Hence the
word _sarab_ becomes a common or proverbial expression,
_pro re evanida,_ for anything light, transient, and
unsubstantial. There is a beautiful allusion to it in the
very ancient poem of Lebid (_Moallaka de Lebid, De Sacy's
ed.,_ p. 294). See also the account of the phenomenon as
given by Diodorus Siculus, lib. iii. ch. 50. It differs,
however, from the picture usually presented by the Arabian
poets, in that the appearances are those of animals and
wild beasts, rather than of rivers and fountains. The
particular kind of phantoms, however, would depend very
much on the kind of imagination possessed by the
travellers, and the circumstances by which it was excited.
It is, in any way, an apt representation of a delusive
world, whether in its images of terror or of attraction.
That the word is thus frequently used in the Arabic, and
that it corresponds well to its ancient Hebrew etymology,
is sufficient to warrant us in thus interpreting the idea
the prophet so impressively sets forth.--_Taylor Lewis._